Public Space: How Much Are You Willing to Pay to Mow a Lawn Nobody Uses?

I’ve written in the past about my volunteer work on my township’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC) advising the township commissioners and staff on environmental matters facing the township.  Historically, they have brushed off our advice.  In the last year or two, however, as some rather self-serving commissioners have cycled off of the board, the board has begun to become more open to the EAC’s suggestions. But there is still some progress to be made.

This is township-owned land that is regularly mowed but is almost never

used by neighbors for any recreational activities. (photo:Google Maps) 

One of the issues that I have been trying to get some action on over the past couple of years has been mowing of township open space properties. I’m not talking about active-use parks and sports fields, which are rightfully very well maintained. I’m talking about areas that the pubic does not actively use. The areas that would be best left as natural open spaces. For no other reason than, “That’s how we’ve always done it,” the township regularly mows township-owned fields throughout our 22-square mile municipality on a regular basis.  Some areas are mowed on a weekly basis and others a few times a season. The current Public Works regime insists on mowing so much land that the township parks crew is unable to do it all, so a mowing contractor is hired. The mowing contract has been a multi-year affair, to the tune of about $90,000 per year.  One of the most wasteful aspects about the mowing contract is that it requires mowing the designated areas on a weekly basis, regardless of whether they need it. So if an area is waterlogged from a week that saw 10 inches of rain, they mow grass that has standing water, often leaving ruts in the grass. Or if we are sweltering in early August without having seen more than half an inch of rain in the past 3 weeks, they mow the brown, crispy grass, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.  Not very picturesque.

Here's an example of the effort wasted on regularly mowing all open

space parcels. With this slope, this land is not usable for pick-up football

or other informal sporting activities. (photo:Google Maps)

Public Works justifies their mowing program by saying that they have some residents calling to complain when an area is allowed to revert to natural vegetation and is mowed just once annually to keep unwanted woody vegetation in check.  I would not be surprised if many of those callers are the same squeaky wheels that whine about having to pay property taxes to the township.

We can't have it both ways, though. We can't mow every township-owned parcel weekly, regardless of drought or rain-soaked ground, and then complain the township isn't maintaining pavilions and baseball dugouts in our parks. Unfortunately, the expectation in too many heads is that all public areas will be mowed and manicured to look the way that lawns look on TV. Unfortunately, Hollywood lawns often achieve their perfection with green spray paint and are about as genuine as many of their leading ladies.  Golf courses and major league ballparks have been painting their grass for years to avoid any perceived imperfections for their clientele with unrealistic expectations of perfect green turf.

The township feels a need to mow stormwater basins as perfectly as

they would their own front yards. More wasted effort.(photo:Google Maps)

But a municipality is not a business, and it should not try to compete with the appearance of the turf at golf courses and professional ballparks.  A municipality is supposed to maintain publicly owned lands so that they are safe and available for residents to enjoy in a reasonable manner. Mine does a good job maintaining our sports fields.  But  I do not think that driving past an unused  9-acre parcel and expecting it to look perfectly mowed for the 5 seconds you drive past it justifies spending $1,000 per year of taxpayer money mowing it.

This year should be the last for the current mowing contract. Hopefully, when the current commissioners consider the 2017 township budget, they will be decline to renew the mowing contract in favor of doing all mowing in-house and on a less frequent basis.  The best thing for these fields would be to replant them with native grasses and native wildflowers to become meadows that only need to be mowed once per year. Less mowing means cost savings for taxpayers.  And wildflowers and native grasses mean food for songbirds and pollinators. That is the kind of picturesque, low-impact habitat that I want my tax dollars supporting.

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: Passing Up the Opportunity to De-Develop a Brownfield for Fear of the Unknown

Most of my posts about land use deal with issues at my own end of Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley of eastern PA. But I feel compelled to write about a news article I saw earlier this week in an environmental news feed I subscribe to. The article was about a recent land use decision made in the western PA community of McCandless, located about a dozen miles north of Pittsburgh.

I had no prior knowledge about the piece of land in question, a roughly 33-acre parcel containing a shuttered movie theater surrounded by asphalt. So I googled the site and found a news story from last October about the original purchase deal that the non-profit Allegheny Land Trust worked out on behalf of the Town of McCandless (McCandless was originally a Township until they adopted a home-rule charter in 1975 and thus became known as a Town. It's one of only two official Towns in PA). The site is bordered to the south by Pine Creek, a tributary of the Allegheny River.  According to the Town Manager, the entire site in located within the creek's designated floodplain. That means that almost the entire 33 acres is impervious surface capping a 100-year floodplain. That's bad, because natural floodplains allow water to percolate into the soil. When undisturbed, they have lots of trees and other vegetation to help absorb flood waters. Yes, natural floodplains can help mitigate flood conditions, and this movie theater appears to have had a history of flooding. Many municipalities prohibit development in 100-year floodplains.  I don't know if McCandless has seen the light and updated their zoning ordinances to exclude construction on floodplains since this site was originally developed, but at least they were actively pursuing an opportunity to de-develop (I just made up that word) this property from an abandoned and completely impervious Brownfield into a green park that would help them manage stormwater and downstream flash flooding.

The outline in red is the 33-acre movie theater property in question in McCandless, PA. It's pretty clear that Pine Creek (highlighted in blue) was hijacked and redirected when Rt. 19 was built. It's also pretty clear that McCandless never gave much thought to prohibiting development on floodplains. The movie theater reportedly flooded up to the fifth row of seats (photo credit: Google Maps). 

But I guess this de-development was too good to be true. Because the story that I initially stumbled upon this week reported on McCandless's leaders getting a case of cold feet at the prospect of paying for additional soil testing to fully characterize the environmental condition of the site.  And I have to acknowledge that most lay people would likely get cold feet when doing the environmental due diligence necessary to consummate a major property acquisition like this one. But if I were a McCandless resident, I would hope that my elected leaders would have consulted with professionals to determine whether pulling the plug on this deal was the best way to allay their concerns, albeit the easiest way. Allow me to give you a very brief overview of environmental due diligence for real estate transactions, and then I'll let you decide if the Town Council jumped the gun.

As part of the purchase of any commercial or industrial property, an environmental site assessment (referred to as a Phase I assessment) would normally be conducted to determine whether there are any physical indications of potential contamination or any public records that might suggest historic operations that may have caused contamination. These sale agreements are usually contingent on the results of the Phase I. If a Phase I turns up any reasons for concern, the buyer generally has two choices: either walk away from the deal completely or perform a Phase II investigation (at the buyer's expense).  A Phase II typically involves collecting confirmatory samples of soil and/or groundwater from locations of concern.  If contamination above state cleanup standards is confirmed, the seller is usually liable for any cleanup costs if both parties want the deal to go through.  If the seller refuses to pay for remediation, the transaction usually dies right there. A good environmental attorney can usually craft a buyer/seller agreement that would become part of the agreement of sale and would lay out target cleanup standards and time schedules for remediation. Or the agreement could even document an agreed upon dollar figure to credit the buyer on the sale price in exchange for the buyer conducting all remediation and thereby absolving the seller of any future liability for the contamination that had been identified. Bottom line is that with two willing parties, a buyer/seller agreement can ensure that the site is cleaned up with no residual liability for the documented contamination for either the buyer or seller. This is a simplified explanation, but it is generally how Pennsylvania's Act 2 Land Recycling program works. In my personal and professional opinion, in Pennsylvania, there is no reason that a willing buyer and a willing seller should ever have a real estate deal collapse over the environmental condition of the subject property.

I don't know exactly what McCandless's Phase I turned up for this site, but I have one idea based on an aerial photo of the site from 1957. In the photo below, I outlined the approximate current property boundaries in red, and Pine Creek is approximately highlighted in blue. The round objects located on the property immediately east of the theater site appear to be large above-ground storage tanks. There are no obvious tanks on the theater site in this photo, but there appears to be a pond, which would have to be man-made based on the geology and topography in this area.  A Phase I would also include a chain of title search and a regulatory database search, both of which are outside of the scope of this blog post (which is now vying for the record of my longest post ever). Although the neighboring storage tanks are shown to have some sort of containment berms around them, containment berms are not foolproof; and it is not likely that these 1950s berms were constructed to current containment standards. If the tank shown to the immediate north of the northeast corner of the theater site had leaked and the berm was breached, the contaminant plume could have migrated to the theater property both over the ground surface and/or below the ground surface. Another question would be whether the former on-site pond was filled in with clean fill or if contaminated fill material was used to level the pond prior to building the movie theater parking lot. So based simply on a quick look at one historical aerial photo of the site, there certainly would be valid reasons to perform confirmatory Phase II sampling. 

This is a 1957 aerial photo of the site which shows some large above-ground storage tanks at the property to the immediate east of the current theater property. This photo shows a pond was present on the theater site in 1957. You know what concerns me the most in this photo?  What municipal officials in their right mind allowed a tank farm to be constructed on a floodplain like this? In the 21st century, this tank farm at this location would be called an "epic planning fail." (photo credit: Pennsylvania Geological Survey).

The recent article indicated that McCandless has spent nearly $40,000 on preliminary soil sampling and associated legal fees.  As an environmental professional, I know that you can install three shallow groundwater monitoring wells and collect and analyze dozens of soil and groundwater samples for under $20,000. I don't know how extensive their Phase II sampling was at this site, but I have to wonder what the legal price tag has been so far. Don't get me wrong, because the legal review is absolutely necessary. However, the cost of legal review is not necessarily indicative of the magnitude of contamination present in the field.  In addition to the environmental due diligence costs, after the $1.25 million sale price for the property,McCandless officials estimated they would incur $400,000 to demolish the theater and its parking lots. Based on my experience with my township's Environmental Advisory Council, I can tell you that Pennsylvania has many grant opportunities for projects like this one, such as the annual Growing Greener grant program. So the out of pocket cost to McCandless to de-develop this land would very likely have been limited to one-half of the total cost after the matching requirement for any available grants. 

I think it's hugely unfortunate that McCandless is foregoing the extremely rare opportunity to de-develop a brownfield into a greenfield. They currently have 33 acres of floodplain paved and impervious, which surely must be exacerbating flooding downstream from this site. The seller would be responsible for the costs of any necessary remediation. The Town simply had to conduct a reasonably thorough characterization of the current soil and groundwater quality and work out an agreement with the seller to ensure that any contamination identified at concentrations above the state's residential cleanup standards is cleaned up to meet those standards.  The Town may even have been able to recover some of those due diligence costs through available grants if they had gone ahead and purchased the land and built the park that was originally proposed. While I certainly do not have all necessary information about the environmental condition of the site to pass judgement on the Town's officials, I have seen enough to have to wonder if they are getting their environmental advice from an environmental professional who has sufficient experience with Pennsylvania's Land Recycling Program (such as myself). 

Cleaning up a contaminated site for future use as a park is not necessarily as easy as cleaning it up for future commercial or industrial use. The residential cleanup standards that must be met for a public park could potentially mean a significantly higher cleanup cost than cleaning up to non-residential standards, in which case the seller might have eventually gotten cold feet. Or the cost differential between meeting residential versus non-residential standards could have been negligible as a percentage of total sale price.  However, I would expect this seller would want to bend over backwards to unload a property that is guaranteed to flood and that, hopefully by now, has zoning limitations on its use due to its location in the 100-year floodplain.

De-development opportunities like this one in McCandless are rare. From my experience, there are very few environmental conditions that cannot be successfully managed when both the buyer and seller of a contaminated property have reasonable expectations and are willing to work together. If I was a McCandless resident, you can bet I would have been making myself heard at their recent Town council meeting.

A Trick to Get More Halloween Treats

I started thinking about this post several weeks ago, around the time that all of the drug store chains and supermarkets started stocking their shelves with Halloween candy and decorations.  I was initially thinking ahead to how I can startle trick or treaters walking up to my front door on Halloween night.  Then I realized I probably won't get the opportunity to do that, because I expect I'll be accompanying my daughter as she trick or treats.

My daughter is old enough to trick or treat in our neighborhood, unsupervised, with a friend, and there are ample well-lit sidewalks to get her around the development.  But she prefers to trick or treat with friends in a different neighborhood.  And it's all about efficiency.

She can hit up three times as many houses per hour in her friend's neighborhood of townhouses than she can in her own neighborhood of homes on 0.4-acre lots. At the townhouses, with front-loading garages lining the streets, the average distance between the front doors is about 25 feet. Back home, trick or treaters have to walk anywhere from 90 to 130 feet from front door to front door (side-loading garages require much wider lots). And that's assuming the kids cut through the grass from house to house instead of walking back out the driveways to the street (anywhere from 30 to 70 feet) and then up the next driveway and sidewalk to the next front door.

My neighborhood. Very circuitous trick or treating because of large lots.

Of course this comparison is apples (hopefully candied, without razor blades) to oranges. These two neighborhoods are two different types of homes and two different price ranges. An average of 1,800 square feet of living space to an average of 2,500. And a difference of 0.15-acre lots to 0.41-acre lots.   But my point here is the usefulness of the extra 0.26-acres per lot in my neighborhood. If someone wants to have a swimming pool in their yard, they would need that extra quarter of an acre. But as you can see on the aerial photo above, fewer than 10% of the homes in my neighborhood have pools. And sure, it's extra room for kids to play. And that's important. But for the adults, it seems to me that the more distance between homes, the less likely it is that neighbors will get to know each other. Fewer opportunities to converse. Relegated to waving to the guy two houses away (200 feet away) while at the mailboxes. Bigger homes on bigger lots, with less sense of community.

My daughter's friend's neighborhood.

Much more efficient for trick or treating

in a development of townhouses. 

When I accompany my daughter trick or treating in her friend's neighborhood of townhouses, with front doors just two dozen feet apart, there is a totally different vibe. Many of the neighbors are on their doorsteps or on lawn chairs in their driveways chatting with their neighbors in between groups of ghouls grabbing Mr. Goodbars.

The differences between these two neighborhoods are based on land use decisions that the township made 20-30 years ago when they instituted the current zoning districts with different minimum lot sizes. But regardless of lot sizes, this sort of intense development eats up wildlife habitat. And lawns are a very poor excuse for wildlife habitat. It is crucial to preserve ample green spaces and natural areas in between developments to avoid full-scale sprawl like you see in these two aerial photos. We humans tend to forget that we need trees and natural areas around us to improve our quality of life. My township was primarily agricultural 50 years ago. But as farmers wanted to retire, farms were gradually sold to developers. And some of the best agricultural soil in Pennsylvania has been essentially lost forever. We now have relatively few active farms remaining and have become just another suburb of Allentown, the third largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania. My township's population is now about 31,000. Our population has increased more than 60% since 2000 thanks to a feeding frenzy of developers fed by a clueless Board of Supervisors.

But at least my neighborhood and my daughter's friend's neighborhood have sidewalks. None of the earliest developments in this township, built from the 1960s up to the early 1990s, were required to have sidewalks. Kids in those neighborhoods have to walk in the street when trick or treating. That's the kind of dumb growth you get when municipal leaders fail to lead and simply cave in to pressure from developers to cut corners.

And back home, I guess my daughter will be trick or treating in the neighborhood where she'll have to do less walking to get more candy. Smart girl.

The Power of Trees to Unite a Community

This is a post about the power of trees. The power of trees to unite a community. The power of trees to provide hope for the future. The hope that trees will unite a community going forward into the future.

This post is actually coming a month late, but I thought it is still worth talking about. Most states celebrate Arbor Day on the last Friday in April every year. Arbor Day was first celebrated in Nebraska in 1872 as a way to encourage communities in the fledgling state to plant trees in the towns that had been treeless prairies only a few decades before. My own community, Lower Macungie Township, PA, was primarily rural through much of the 20th century and focused on agriculture. Since 1971, however, Lower Macungie has gone from 10,521 acres of farmland to less than 3,000 currently. And from 8,814 residents in 1970 to over 31,000 in 2010. That is a 250% increase in 40 years, compared to the U.S. population, which increased just 51% in that same 40-year period. In the first decade of the 21st century, we had the dubious designation of fastest growing municipality in Pennsylvania.

One of the results of the rapid and poorly planned development of Lower Macungie over the past 30 years has been fragmentation. As large farms were gradually sold off to developers, we saw increasing fragmentation of wildlife habitat as well as fragmentation of human habitat. Nearly every large residential development built during the growth years was not connected to the rest of the community by any means other than automobile.  If a development was required to have sidewalks (which did not happen until the late 1990s), the sidewalks tended to dead-end at the limits of the project. No forethought was given to requiring connecting sidewalks to get to adjacent developments or even just to get outside of the development without having to walk the circuitous sidewalks though along the streets that were laid out in patterns reminiscent of a medieval labyrinths.

Photo credit: Sharon Schrantz, East Penn Press

This year the township’s Environmental Advisory Council (EAC), which I chair, initiated our first annual Arbor Day event. I felt that beginning an Arbor Day tradition in the township could be a way to address two concerns I have:  it would add back a small bit of the nature we’ve lost through the past decades of development, and it would be an opportunity for residents from different developments to join together to celebrate planting a new tree in a township-owned open space.

The EAC selected a location for our Arbor Day tree that is near the only elementary school in the township that has sidewalks leading to it and which is safely by foot from at least six different developments.  Had it not been for the school being built five years ago, this area would still not have any sidewalks connecting the surrounding developments.  The location we chose for our Arbor Day tree is an underutilized parcel that the builder of an adjacent development had to donate to the township as ”recreational open space,” primarily because a floodplain separates it from the rest of the development. The parcel is about 6.5 acres if you don’t count a stormwater channel bordering it on one side.  Because the parcel is categorized as recreational open space, the Public Works Department mows it regularly all summer long, whether it needs it or not. In the 10 years I’ve lived here, however, I’ve never seen anyone use the parcel for recreation.

Photo credit: Sharon Schrantz, East Penn Press

Our Arbor Day celebration on April 24 this year opened with a soloist from the local high school chorus (who happens to be my niece) singing the National Anthem, and with local Boy Scout Troop 131 presenting the American flag for the pledge of allegiance. The centerpiece of our celebration was our Arbor Day tree for 2015:  a northern red oak (Quercus rubra) that was placed in a pre-dug hole.  Following a few words from local dignitaries, we asked all in attendance to take a turn with a shovel and toss in some dirt to help backfill the tree. By adding even a handful of soil to the tree’s root ball, everyone present had taken place in planting the tree. And by doing so, they are part of the legacy of hope for future generations of residents who will enjoy the tree’s beauty and shade.

Our plan is to select different locations in coming years to plant the township’s future Arbor Day trees – locations that can be accessed by at least two surrounding neighborhoods so that people from different developments can be drawn to the beauty the trees will offer and enjoy the birds that will also share the trees with the community. H   opefully, the 30 or so residents who attended our first annual celebration this year will seek out future celebrations and will bring their friends and neighbors.

Photo credit: Addison George, Morning Call (www.mcall.com) 

Big Step Forward for Preserving Some of Lower Macungie's Open Space

I really wasn't expecting to update last night's blog so soon. But at tonight's Lower Macungie Board of Commissioners meeting, Commissioner Jim Lancsek, who had previously spoken against efforts to preserve open space, presented a proposal to move open space preservation efforts forward.

Lancsek's proposal, which will have to go to the Board of Commissioners' Budget & Finance Committee for review and then a recommendation back to the board, suggested taking advantage of historically low interest rates for a bond issue or other financing options and possibly using surplus funds to preserve three key properties in the township. Lancsek said he doesn't support preserving open space without a functional purpose.  But he would support buying development rights for farms that, if fully developed with three or four single family homes per acre, would create excessive traffic problems for the township. He also said that he thinks it would be appropriate for the township to purchase in fee simple parcels adjacent to existing township parks so that those parks could be expanded.

The township's Environmental Advisory Council, which I chair, sent the commissioners a recommendation in spring of 2013 to allow a voter referendum to ask the residents whether they would support a fractional increase in our Earned Income Tax for a 5-year period to fund open space preservation. That recommendation was stuck in the Budget & Finance Committee until tonight when the Budget & Finance Committee recommended to the full board that no action be taken on the EAC's 2013 recommendation. Likewise, another potential open space funding recommendation that the EAC sent to the commissioners last year, which involved earmarking all real estate transfer taxes from a 700-acre commercial and residential subdivision that was previously zoned for Agricultural Preservation, was finally rejected by the commissioners. And I couldn't be happier.

I'm happy because the commissioners themselves looked for and found a viable means of funding preservation of some key properties in the township.  The EAC had discussed recommending a bond issue to get all of the needed funding up front to preserve several properties at once, but we thought that incurring debt would be frowned upon by more people than would take issue with a minor Earned Income Tax bump. And when I say minor, I'm talking about the price of one large two-topping pizza per month for someone earning the median income in our community. But that route would not have accumulated enough money to move forward with acquisitions for a few years. Mr. Lancsek's proposal could potentially get the money needed to preserve two properties borrowed and in the budget for next year.

This new proposal isn't a slam dunk by any means, but it is a very encouraging sign that one of our Board of Commissioners' biggest critics of open space preservation over the past three years has finally acknowledged the residents' wishes and stepped forward with an aggressive proposal that could make a real difference in what Lower Macungie will look like when we are fully built out in 20-30 years.  In three decades we might just have a few green patches remaining to separate the warehouses and cookie cutter houses from each other.

Why are Some Politicians Afraid of Voter Referendums?

I've blogged previously about my efforts with Lower Macungie Township's Environmental Advisory Council (EAC), which I chair, to try to get a formal open space preservation program up and running in our township.  We sent a recommendation to our township's Board of Commissioners back in April 2013, urging the commissioners to authorize a voter referendum about whether we should initiate a modest increase in our earned income tax (EIT) for a five-year period to fund open space preservation in our community.  That proposal has been hamstrung in the commissioners' Budget & Finance Committee ever since.

An endangered way of life in Lower Macungie Township
(photo credit: Morning Call).

Specifically, what the EAC wants to do is have the township partner with the county's Bureau of Agricultural Land Preservation to be able to make offers to township farmers to purchase the development rights for their land. The county's farmland preservation program has a cap on how much they can offer per acre for development rights. In some of the more rural northern townships in Lehigh County, they might be able to offer enough to get a couple of farmers interested. But here in Lower Macungie, our undeveloped land is some of the most expensive in the county.  The county program cannot compete here in Lower Macungie, so the township needs to ante up if we want to buy development rights for any of our remaining farms. When a farmer sells their development rights, they would still own the land and may use it in any manner than want. They just cannot subdivide it for a housing development. So when they eventually sell the farm, it would be sold as a farm rather than as building lots. We think it's the ideal free market solution to preserving some of our remaining farms. It is totally voluntary on the land owners' part. If they don't want to see their family farm bulldozed and built on but they need money to fund their retirement, selling their development rights and keeping their farm is a great option.

But Lower Macungie needs a source of revenue to be able to work with the county to make offers to our farmers for their development rights. We have proposed a temporary, 0.25 percent increase in our EIT for a period of 5 years, which could preserve a few of our farms. This exact funding mechanism has been approved in voter referendums in seven of 10 Lehigh Valley townships that have put it on the ballot. And the only way the EIT increase could continue after 5 years is by another voter referendum authorizing a finite extension. But before anything else, we need to get the question on the ballot to ask the Lower Macungie voters. I'm very disappointed that some of our commissioners are refusing to let the residents have a voice at the polls on a matter than most of the commissioners really don't seem to care about.

The two commissioners on the Budget & Finance Committee are unashamedly pro-development, so I don't think there is any interest in that committee in preserving farmland. In fact, one of those commissioners has publicly said that we already have enough open space. That statement is either incredibly naaive or incredibly arrogant. Because most of the farmland that we see when we drive around Lower Macungie has been zoned for several decades to allow either 12,000-square-foot or 18,000-square-foot residential lots. All it would take is the farmer holding up the white flag and saying, "I've had enough. I'm ready to cash in."

Three of our commissioners have also said that they oppose voter referendums for any reason at all. One of them has famously said that they are elected to make the tough decisions, and that not enough voters turn out at the polls for a referendum to mean anything. But using his logic, we could just as easily argue that the voters who turned out to elect each of them are not sufficient to constitute a mandate for them to make this sort of decision.

The question of whether to fund a farmland preservation program is actually much bigger than whether the township should buy a new dump truck, install a new traffic light, or even install an expensive artificial turf athletic field. Because whether or not we decide to fund preservation of our remaining farmland is a decision that will mold, one way or the other, what the township looks like in 20 years when there are no more buildable parcels of land bigger than 10 acres. In 20 years, will we still have a few open farm fields here and there? Or will we have nearly continuous expanses of vinyl boxes clustered around cul-de-sacs spitting out more cars to clog our already inadequate roads? The residents have a lot at stake here, because a fully built out township, and the traffic nightmares and crowded schools that accompany that scenario, will certainly devalue our properties. Isn't that something that the Lower Macungie voters have a right to decide for themselves?  Or maybe this will be the year that our elected officials surprise me and step up with their own plan to preserve open space in Lower Macungie. I'll keep you posted.

How New Development Can Help Fund Farmland Preservation

It seems like an oxymoron, but there is an opportunity to score funding for a municipality's Farmland Preservation Fund when a greenfield is sold to a developer. At least there is here in Pennsylvania with how our real estate transfer tax is divvied up after a property sale. In PA, the buyer and seller each pay a 1% transfer tax. Of that 2%, the municipality gets one half and the local school district gets the other half. For larger municipalities or places with large commercial or industrial properties that change hands from time to time, the local cut of the real estate transfer tax can be a nice supplemental revenue stream.

Back Story
I've blogged previously about a seemingly shady land deal that happened in 2010 here in Lower Macungie Township, so if you've already read about this back story please feel free to skip to the next section.  Lower Macungie is 22.6 square miles and is home to nearly 31,000 people. Over the past 20 years, we've experienced a lot of farmland being lost to developments - mostly residential, but some commercial and light industrial too. In 2010, the township's Board of Commissioners entered into a closed-door re-zoning agreement with the owner of the largest contiguous tract of agricultural land in our township, about 700 acres, nearly all of which was zoned for agricultural preservation. That land is now zoned as light industrial, highway commercial, and residential.

What did the township get out of that deal?  The guarantee that the land owner, one of the largest land owners and speculators in the two-county Lehigh Valley, would withdraw his proposal to build a quarry on that land. But that quarry proposal was just a bluff. If he had built a quarry, which was allowed under the agricultural zoning, it could only have been a fraction of the size he originally proposed, because: (1) there is a major petroleum pipeline easement running directly through the tract; and (2) I doubt that he could not have gotten approval from the PA Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) to dewater the quarry to a workable depth without completely dewatering the adjacent Little Lehigh Creek, designated by PADEP as a High Quality Cold Water Fishery.  But the board of five commissioners at that time included three Realtors. The Realtors would be getting more inventory into the local real estate market if the land was developed, so it certainly worked out for them. Let's not even start talking about how the local farm roads cannot currently handle the truck traffic from the nearby warehouses that have already been built in the area.  

A Warehouse Grows on a Farm Field

Part of 700 acres of land in Lower Macungie Township that used to
be zoned for agricultural preservation but is about to be developed

into several large warehouses. (photo credit: www.mcall.com)

Three light-industrial parcels that were subdivided from 700 acres of formerly preserved agricultural land have been sold to a developer and are going through the approvals for construction of large warehouses. These will be the first of several light industrial parcels and commercial parcels sold and developed. Eventually there will be 400 new homes as well. All of these new greenfield projects are thanks to our previous Board of Commissioners that facilitated the sweetheart rezoning deal for our local land baron, who has an industrial-scale turkey farm that he tends to when he is not planning his next greenfield development project. Over the last several decades this nominal turkey farmer, and his late father before him, made a habit of buying thousands of acres of local farmland, farming the land for a while, and then selling the land off to developers when the time seems right. At least half of the 700 acres involved in the 2010 rezoning deal had already been zoned for agricultural preservation when the land baron originally bought the land. And he has the clout to get Realtors who moonlight as local politicians to bow before him, kiss his ring, and rezone land - without even requiring him to pay to upgrade the local roads that would service the land he wants to develop. But this is all in the past now. So how do we make lemonade out of this lemon of a rezoning deal?

Plans for new warehouses on land formerly zoned for agricultural preservation

in Lower Macungie Township. (photo credit: WFMZ.com)

By the time the 700 acres of formerly preserved farmland is fully developed, the township's total share of the real estate transfer tax revenue could be as much as $600,000. So far we've already seen $120,000 come into the township coffers from this revenue stream.  Since the residents of Lower Macungie were shafted on this rezoning deal that will convert 700 acres of farmland to sprawling warehouses, strip commercial boxes, and 400 homes with kids to burden the local schools, shouldn't the proceeds from the real estate taxes be used to offset that loss of open space? All real estate tax revenue from these former 700 acres of preserved farmland should be designated for a farmland preservation lockbox and used to help to purchase development rights from other local farms.

Unfortunately, $600,000 will be a drop in the bucket to purchase enough development rights to make a difference, but it is critical that we begin with the real estate tax revenue from this poster child for poor land use decisions and use it as seed money for a deliberate and defined effort to slow down the pace of greenfield development within our community. If we can start with earmarking this real estate transfer tax, we can then have a more serious discussion about a referendum to ask voters to authorize an earned income tax to more fully fund farmland preservation in our community.  Save it or pave it.

Political Attack on PA's Riparian Buffers Requires Immediate Action

The Pennsylvania state Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would remove protections for riparian buffers along streams designated as High Quality (HQ) and Exceptional Value (EV).  These are the kinds of streams that support naturally reproducing populations of trout and have the macroinvertibrate diversity to sustain trout populations.

State Rep. Marcia Hahn (R-Northampton)

HB1565 was introduced by Rep. Marcia Hahn (R-Northampton) and approved by the House last month.  The bill is now before the state Senate and could be voted on as early as next Tuesday when the Senate reconvenes after their Columbus Day weekend break.  If passed, the bill would eliminate the requirement for a 150-foot wide riparian buffer between a project involving earth disturbance and an adjacent EV or HQ stream.

“We have seen significant frustrations under the current regulations as businesses, landowners and homebuyers alike have expressed their concerns with the riparian buffer requirements and the negative impacts they have on development and land use in many areas of the Commonwealth,” said Hahn. “Oftentimes, this has been seen as an instance of eminent domain without compensation as landowners could be prevented from using their own property.”

No, Rep. Hahn. This is nothing like eminent domain. What we have now is a regulation that protects environmentally sensitive waters of the Commonwealth and the fish and other organisms living in and around them from irresponsible land uses that would degrade the downstream portions of these streams. A landowner does not have the right to use their property in a manner that poses a real threat of degrading HQ and EV waterways.  For Rep. Hahn to posture this bill as a landowner rights issue ignores the fact that Pennsylvania's natural resources, including its waterways, are “the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come (Article 1, Section 27 of the PA Constitution).”  Therefore, no landowner has the right to conduct activities on their land that can cause sedimentation or contaminants to enter EV or HQ streams.  Other than that, they may use their property in any legal manner they chose.

Earlier this week, HB1565 was amended and voted out in the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee. The amendments, however, could not repair a bill that is fundamentally detrimental to environmentally sensitive waterways. The two amendments did the following:

(1) Clarified that replacement buffers must occur along special protection waters within the same drainage list. This means that buffers could be destroyed in one tributary of a main EV or HQ stream as long as the developer beefs up buffers in a section of another tributary of the same main stream. This is a nonsensical compromise.

(2) Allowed a concession that alternative Best Management Practices can be substituted instead of a buffer as long as the alternatives used are “collectively…substantially equivalent to a riparian buffer…” This amendment essentially recognizes that riparian buffers are the most effective management tool. So then why compromise at all and remove protections for riparian buffers?

Little Lehigh Creek in Lower Macungie Township, PA.
A designated HQ stream (photo by author).

So, Rep. Hahn, please do not frame this bill as a bogus landowners rights battle.  This bill seems like nothing more than an attempt to ingratiate yourself with developers seeking to squeeze a few more units into projects bordering environmentally sensitive streams.  Too bad those developers cannot comprehend that protecting adjacent streams has a positive effect on the value of their finished project.  Who wouldn’t want to live next to a pristine and well-protected stream?

Please email your state senator today and urge them to vote against HB1565 when it comes to a vote. There is not much time left to ensure our headwater streams remain protected with proper riparian buffers.

If you don’t know who your PA state senator is, you can look them up here (http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/index.cfm) and find their email address.  Please do it this weekend.